Black Man Sues NYPD Over Racially Biased Psych Screening

Barry Brown has taken legal action against the NYPD after being barred from becoming a deputy sheriff.

An African-American man who took legal action against the NYPD for an alleged racially biased psychological screening was granted permission to pursue his racial discrimination case.

According to the New York Daily News, a Brooklyn federal judge ruled that Barry Brown has a substantial amount of evidence to prove that he was barred from becoming a deputy sheriff due to his race after taking a psychological test.

After Brown’s May 2013 termination, he hired a psychiatrist who said Brown could handle the job. But the city stuck to its story that Brown wasn’t deputy sheriff material.

When he sued in 2016, Brown said the psychological screening process was open to implicit bias and subjective calls from individual psychologists. The city didn’t do the testing in any standardized way, he alleged.

In her decision Thursday, Gershon said Brown adequately pled disparate treatment and disparate impact. She said he did seem to make a plausible argument he was qualified for the job.

According to the outlet, all of the other Black candidates in Brown’s academy class were labeled psychologically unsuited and did not graduate.

A spokesperson for the Law Department says the city will address Brown’s claims.